Under the complex gazes of terror and confusion from everyone, Lin En slowly extended both hands, hovering them above the surface of the lake.
The next moment, lightning flashed!
But it wasn’t wild thunderbolts—countless thin blue electric serpents, as slender as hair yet dazzlingly bright, poured from his palms, instantly diving into the calm lake water!
“Zzz — Zzzzz — ”
The nerve-jarring sound of electricity crackled, but an even stranger scene unfolded.
The vast expanse of the lake didn’t surge from the influx of electricity.
Instead, it began to boil in an eerily unnatural way.
This wasn’t a boiling caused by heat, but a cold, silent boiling!
Countless minuscule bubbles erupted madly from every inch of the lakebed, gurgling upward and turning the clear water into a murky chaos.
A dry, pungent scent filled the air—a smell like burning stone, something they had never encountered before.
The lake itself began to emit a deep, continuous humming, as if an Ancient Beast was awakening beneath the water.
“What… what is he doing?”
A mercenary asked, trembling.
“I don’t know.”
Ella’s eyes were filled with unprecedented confusion.
“I only know this is a lightning-type magic. He… he’s like… transforming the lake!”
Barret gripped the Battle Axe in his hand, his palms slick with cold sweat.
He didn’t understand, but he could feel it—an overwhelming danger was gathering within the boiling lake water.
It was a premonition of Death, a thousand times more terrifying than facing a legion of Swarm, enough to freeze the soul itself.
Ella looked at Lin En, full of doubt.
As a Scholar, the scene before her shattered all understanding.
“What is he doing?! The lake… it’s dropping! But that’s not evaporation, nor any form of elemental transference! Gods, what has he done to that lake?!”
She couldn’t comprehend it!
Water was water, one of the fundamental elements of the world. It could be evaporated to vapor, or frozen into ice, but it could never simply vanish in such a way!
The process lasted a full half minute.
After thirty seconds, as the vanguard of the Swarm flew over the camp toward the lake, Lin En withdrew his hands.
The humming, the crackling of electricity, the bubbling—everything fell silent.
The lake surface returned to a deathly stillness.
Lin En slowly lifted his head. In those deep eyes, the twisted reflections of billions of locusts flickered, but his gaze remained calm as an ancient well.
He raised his right hand, and toward the invisible cloud of Death, snapped his fingers lightly.
“Snap.”
A crisp sound, drowned in the thunder of insect cries.
A spark, smaller than a needle’s tip, appeared at his fingertip and shot into the void.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely at that moment.
An unbearably bright white light exploded above the lake.
In the next instant, a new Sun seemed to be born upon the land.
The blinding white light swallowed all color from the world, turning everything pure white in the eyes of all who witnessed it.
Then, the Sun burst open!
A vast dome of pure flames shot skyward with unstoppable force, spreading wildly upward like a gigantic canopy of fire, igniting the entire night sky above!
The entire sky was set ablaze with an eerie blue flame!
“Down!!!”
Barret braced himself behind the Tower Shield, Combat Aura surging, using all his strength for a final roar—but the raging shockwave had already transformed into the fist of an invisible giant, tearing everyone apart and hurling them into the distance!
Scalding air flooded their lungs, bringing searing pain, and countless people fell unconscious beneath the divine might without even a scream.
When Barret struggled to lift his head from the dirt and rubble, he witnessed the most terrifying—and most magnificent—scene of his life.
The sky was burning.
That black curtain of endless Swarm was burning!
Flames erupted from the lake beneath the Swarm, roaring skyward!
It wasn’t a pillar of fire, but an endless sea of flames twisting upward, like a Death Lotus blooming slowly between heaven and earth.
The lowest Swarm, touched by the burning tide, were instantly vaporized, erased from the world without even a trace of ash.
The next second, the lake boiled even more violently.
It wasn’t ordinary bubbling, but the entire vast lake erupting into explosive boil in an instant!
Gigantic columns of steam shot skyward, screeching like a million kettles boiling at once! The lake level dropped visibly to the naked eye.
The water had been boiled away!
The raging flames didn’t stop. They climbed the layers of Swarm, spreading upward in madness!
Barret watched helplessly as that hopeless black cloud was swiftly devoured by a blinding, destructive blue fire.
Soon, the entire sky became a burning dome.
Countless charred insect corpses blazed, trailing black smoke and fire, falling from the ignited night sky like an apocalyptic rain of shooting stars!
More fire rained down into the dried lakebed, meeting the remaining scalding steam and producing a terrifying “hiss hiss hiss,” like billions of venomous snakes spitting.
The entire world was swallowed by this all-consuming firestorm.
In just over ten seconds, the black curtain that once represented invincible numbers and Death was utterly wiped out and incinerated.
Scorching air baked Barret’s face. He could even smell the nauseating stench of burning Swarm corpses.
Everyone stared blankly at the sight before them, minds blank.
Ella, hiding behind Barret, stared ahead, lips trembling.
What she witnessed was not a battle, nor a magic spell.
It was a scene from myth.
This was… the Fire of Divine Retribution.
The air was thick with heat. Many found their Protective Dou Qi weakening under the intense temperature, mouths dry as they struggled to swallow.
After a long time, the flames faded, the shockwaves calmed.
The sky cleared.
The Golden Swarm that had left the Empire Legion helpless had vanished without a trace.
When everyone regained their senses, they stared in shock at the scene before them.
The once-clear, beautiful lake had disappeared.
In its place was a massive, steaming, dried crater.
With a single strike, disaster was annihilated.
With a single strike, the lake was gone.
All were stunned. Trembling, their gazes turned to the one responsible.
Lin En stood quietly at the edge of the scorched earth, his clothes untouched, not a single crease.
Barret, a hardened man who had licked blood from blades for decades, felt his legs weaken, lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.
He gazed at the burning sky and falling fire rain, his mind echoing a single term: Fire of Divine Retribution.
This was not power a mortal could wield—this was the wrath of the gods, capable of burning the world to ashes!
Ella, the learned Scholar of the Silver Moon Trading Company, trembled all over—not from fear alone, but a numbing disbelief as her mind crashed.
Her gaze was locked on the dried crater, her thoughts racing, desperately seeking a logical explanation for the apocalyptic sight before her.
“Flames… no, this isn’t any known fire magic.”
She murmured to herself, her voice so faint only she could hear.
“I didn’t sense any connection to the Elemental Realm of fire. That flame… did it originate from the water itself?!”
The conclusion made her shiver.
“But how could water burn? No, impossible… Unless the lake had been saturated with massive amounts of Alchemy Fuel Oil beforehand?”
The thought was instantly dismissed.
“No. How much fuel would it take to cover a lake this size? Besides… before that, he used that strange lightning… that wasn’t offensive lightning magic at all, it was like… some kind of process applied to the water itself!”
Her reasoning hit a dead end.
She ran through every record of magic in the Silver Moon Trading Company’s secret archives, from basic Elemental Theory, to advanced secret spells, to strictly forbidden Ancient Forbidden Curses.
Nothing!
Not a single one!
No magic, no theory, claimed that water could be transformed into fuel!
“Could it be… he really used water as the fuel?”
This insane thought exploded like a bomb in Ella’s mind, followed by deeper confusion and absurdity.
“But how is that possible?! Water restrains fire—this is the foundation of Elemental Theory! It’s a fact even a three-year-old child knows, as unquestionable as the Sun rising in the east! How could water burn?!”
She had studied the darkest, most powerful Forbidden Curses.
All those world-destroying magics required lengthy incantations, complex magic circles, rare catalysts, even life sacrifices!
A Forbidden Curse was not just powerful—it required a terrifying cost.
But this before her…
She shook her head violently, pain and incomprehension filling her eyes.
“There was nothing! No incantation, no magic circle, no cooperative casting, not even a perceivable surge of magic from the Elemental Realm!”
Ella stared at Lin En’s calm back, an unprecedented chill crawling up her spine.
What this man had done was utterly irrational.
It defied everything she knew!
In that moment, Ella’s Scholar’s pride—and her worldview—shattered together.